Tale of Birle by Voigt Cynthia

Author:Voigt, Cynthia [Voigt, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

IT WAS THREE DAYS BEFORE Birle was able to leave the house, three days of toil. She didn’t know what would satisfy Corbel, so she dared not leave anything undone. The house had accumulated years of dirt. She made the meals, both the morning meal and the large meal they ate at midafternoon. She scrubbed clothing clean, and stretched it out to dry in the sunlight. In the evenings she sewed a shirt for Yul, a yellow shirt with arms that were too short to cover his wrists, and sleeves unevenly joined, but a clean shirt he could wear. She didn’t know if it was because fear rode up on her from behind or because hope shone ahead, but she hurried from one task to the next, never resting.

The laboratory too required cleaning. There, Yul helped, and Joaquim. She and Joaquim uncrated bowls, vials, flasks, wooden bowls with tight-fitting lids, oddly shaped instruments with long and short handles, little metal pots in which a fire could be burned, bellows to increase the heat, and more books. All had to have straw brushed from them, and then be washed, and then rubbed dry, and then set out on the shelves Yul had scrubbed. Birle couldn’t rest, unlike Yul, who would curl up like a dog whenever he had no task to do. Even when she lay in her bed at night, her mind roamed between memory and imagination. Hope gnawed at her like hunger.

When at last Birle came out of the house and onto the street, it was midmorning of the fourth day after Corbel’s visit. Yul accompanied her to market, for her protection; he followed behind her, a basket in his hand. Birle turned to the right, following the descending street.

Although the air was perfumed with the scent of flowers, and flowering trees, there was nothing to be seen but stone walls, lining the dirt road, and the sky shining blue above. The walls were as tall as Yul’s shoulder and ran continuously on both sides of the street, broken only for the occasional set of wooden doors. Birle didn’t, for all her hope, expect to find Orien that day. To find one person among the many dwellers in such a city wouldn’t be the work of one day. That day she hoped only to begin to learn her way about the city. She hurried on.

As Joaquim had said, at the thick stone wall that enclosed the old city, soldiers stood on guard. They demanded to be told where she came from and where she was going, then they let her pass.

On the other side of the wall, the street ran more steeply downhill, and the houses were small wooden buildings, with thatched roofs, crowded up next to one another. The air smelled not of flowers but of food and sweat and privies. Many smaller streets twisted off the one she walked down. Many people—men, women, and children—were on the street, and in the houses. Red-shirted soldiers rode down past her, and up past her, and the people pushed to the side to let them pass.

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